ashbury

Many years I'd agree with you, but I don't think 2019 is such a season. 2 WAR is pretty close to the definition of "average major leaguer". If that's all you're aiming for, and you don't have some superior players already on the roster, you're not really contending, you're just average. Business analytics people at airlines and oil firms and forestry companies understand that when you have a constrained system, it may be difficult to anticipate exactly which constraints will be binding and which will be slack. Learning which, will tell you how to proceed with your strategic planning. On a baseball team, among the most crucial constraints are the 25-man roster (you can't win a pennant by using 100 cheap 1-WAR players), the 40-man roster (ditto), and your budget. Right now, we have very little likelihood of exceeding the budget until we sign some new players. Given a lot of potentially average players on board right now, at low cost, it makes sense to sign a few high-WAR potential players, even if the price-performance isn't good. If you're in the habit of assuming that budget will always be the binding constraint at the very outset, you'll miss opportunities. There's a difference between efficiency and effectiveness. With all our cost-efficient youngsters, I want to focus on effectiveness, for the few guys we do sign. I don't know right now that $35M for 3+ WAR isn't actually a pretty good deal for this present situation, unless you have a better way to acquire 3+ WAR.

I offered a scenario a few days ago: if such pitcher is doing well in a game, and if the score is favorable to allow some slack, let him pitch to the top of the lineup a third time. When the manager has gained confidence, the training wheels can come off, and the pitcher is now a major league starter. I think this is a sound strategy for every rookie starter, regardless of how highly touted.

I've said before that I think the Opener strategy addresses a real problem. But you need a stronger bullpen than the 2018 Twins had, for the strategy to make very much sense to me. The point isn't to have the top of the opponent's batting order clobber a mediocre guy to begin the game.

Other teams don't wait until a player reaches the majors to start scouting him. I think they know too.

My small report from the other day pales in comparison to Steve's thorough review of the week, and is only a complement to it, but it's found here: http://twinsdaily.com/blog/159/entry-11268-arizona-fall-league-2018-nov-1-2/

Y'all thought Watergate was a constitutional crisis, you ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until the executive branch ignores subpoenas, and any appeal to the Supreme Court is decided 5-4 against the House. I'm reminded of the quote attributed to Josef Stalin regarding the Pope: "how many divisions does he command?"

Interesting, but not shorthand for anything really. An acquaintance of mine lost in a two-woman race for a seat there. The winner is all about making life easier for those already well off.

Your faith in Dave St Peter is touching but misplaced.

Why? He and others have paid no price, so far.

There is money behind the message of apathy to this audience: https://www.facebook.com/CareyWedler/videos/208151986748150/ Pernicious and cynical appeal to progressives.

If electoral fraud, it would be incompetent electoral fraud, to cut it that close.

I didn't see your comment until after I posted my response, and I'm reassured, I guess. Unless.... unless... the people you met are part of the CONSPIRACY!

As a male interrupting the conversation of two women I didn't know, I was already on thin ice regarding social mores, and they were turning into an office building just as I asked so the time window was very brief. They were nice enough but it would have been pushing my luck even if I had thought of it, to go on by offering unsolicited advice. Most people requesting mail-in ballots probably are doing so because going to the polling place won't be practical on election day. That's the beauty part, if actual chicanery is involved. Of course. In the case of the two women, I have no idea, and you are right that no one ought to take this anecdote for anything more than it is. The other instance is known to be an Arizona resident, away from the vicinity of the polling place for the day. I have no standing, but I think someone in Arizona should try to see if there are numerous others with this tale of woe, and attempt some sort of class-action if there are enough. But if this was chicanery I would expect the perpetrators to be prepared with plenty of smoke to obscure the situation.

Ugh, this is how bad it's gotten: as I glanced at the page of thread links my eye parsed "Royce Lewis" before the rest of the headline, and I assumed it was bad news of some kind.

The people who genuinely equivocate "but on the other hand" in every instance, are going to be in for a disappointing experience when they finally wake up and decide that one thing is not as bad as another after all but that it's too late to reverse the corruption. It might already be, based on my Small Sample Size of vote suppression evidence in Arizona today.

Walking in downtown Phoenix this morning, I overheard a conversation between two women, one of whom said her vote-by-mail ballot never arrived. I was forward enough to say that she was the second such person I had heard such a thing about in the past 24 hours, and asked which party registration if she didn't mind saying. Democratic, same as the other person I heard. Some coincidence.

Welcome to the site! Feel free to drop in and offer insights anytime.

I'm seeing a lot of bad values on the FA market. OTOH, with such a low current payroll, our FO shouldn't be bargain hunting. If a player fits our needs and moves the needle, don't be afraid to outbid the other teams and risk "winner's curse". I'm just not sure Marwin fits that description. He had one outlier year at bat in 2017, and I don't think his glove is anything special at any particular position. I don't think he's above average. Our problem hasn't really been with not having enough average guys. I'm more concerned about not letting even one 25-man spot be less than it could be, than the money. Most years I care about price-performance, but this year I'm ready for just performance. If the FO thinks Marwin's the guy, though, go get him - the pickings are pretty slim overall.

Ash not GM. Ash no send pitcher to AAA. Ash only manager, in game of life. But all seriousness aside, Hosken raised an important point: we're mainly discussing Plan A. Whether it's an Opener, or stacked starters, we first want to see if the idea does any good at all, if things go according to plan. But the next step of the analysis is to see whether the idea gets in the way of switching immediately to Plan B. You'll still need a long man in the bullpen, when the guy you wanted to go 5+ innings has nothing. You'll still need a LOOGY. You'll still need a ROOGY. If you used your LOOGY as your Opener, are you stuck later on? If your long-man was redeployed as the first of two stacked starters, what do you do when the second guy comes out throwing lollipops? Even Saint Justin of Verlander had a game in August this year where he didn't come out for the third inning. There always has to be a contingency plan for the game. The bottom line for me is to be trying to ask the right question, which I think is this: how do you attack the other team's best batters, with the best arms, the most often that you can, the most strategically when the game is actually on the line, given that it's a long season and there are 162x9 innings to cover? People complain rightly that closers aren't used optimally; this discussion takes that to the next level. The matter of "best arms" is fluid, since these guys are not defined by the stats on their baseball cards - they aren't the same from game to game, and (as we see with the references to third-time-through-the-lineup) not even the same from inning to inning. It gets complicated in a hurry. But nobody, from Connie Mack on down, is smart enough to genuinely think through all the complicated details - so you come up with a plan of attack, and then cope. No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, as they say. But that doesn't mean that the army that has no plan is likely to win, nor the army that uses the same plan as in the last war. So I like this discussion of new plans.

Oh no! Was the scotch hurt?

Nishioka was a pretty bad acquisition too. But what is the relevance? Morrison had a career-worst year at age 30 after a career-best season at 29. Nelson by contrast has Cruzed through his 30s at a high rate of production. There's not too much similar about them, so it's a bad lesson to learn from Morrison that signing a player is destined to fail. I'd advocate getting someone by trade, instead, but Tommy Herr worked out so badly.

Eclipsed only by your brilliance in recognizing me.

Being manager is not easy. My approach to getting buy-in is to offer to leave the "starter" in to face the top of the lineup a third time, if he is going well in a game begun by an Opener, and where there is a little bit of a lead to work with (so that I don't have to pull him after one baserunner). Show me he can be a three times through the full lineup guy, and we'll take the training wheels off and skip the Opener next time it's his turn. Until then, "enjoy the show during the first inning and be ready to go after that." Maybe I don't speak the language of top notch competitive athletes, though. In that case, it's on the manager to find the right way to state it, in terms of it being a team game, yadda yadda.

Seattle is a tough park for a hitter. I'm only amazed he did as well as he did, there, prior to 2018. But even in 2018, his OPS there was an entirely serviceable .800, and away from that park it was .900 which I take to be more of an indicator of his general ability. Likewise, his results against righty batters was around .800 OPS, and while I don't have a further breakdown of home/road for that, I would expect that it's the home park that held him down to that. I'd be interested in deeper analytics than I can muster, but nothing I see on the surface says to me that he'll suddenly go all Logan Morrison on us, or whoever signs him, at least not for the first year.